Rhoma Irama

Rhoma Irama (born Dec. 11, 1947, Tasikmalaya, West Java, Indon.) is an Indonesian popular musician who was in large part responsible for the creation of dangdut dance music, a blend of Indonesian, Indian, Middle Eastern, and Western styles that amassed a tremendous following in Indonesia in the late 20th century.

Born to a lower-middle-class family in West Java just after Indonesian independence, Oma Irama seemed destined to become a musician. Indeed, his mother had chosen the name Irama, which means “rhythm,” because she had given birth to him shortly after returning from a concert. Oma and his family moved to the densely populated city of Jakarta when he was a young child, where he soon showed a penchant for Western rock and pop music. He began to play the guitar, and by the time he was a teenager he already was performing with a number of bands. Oma went to college briefly in the mid-1960s, but he abandoned his formal studies to devote himself to music.

By the early 1970s Oma had become disenchanted with Western rock music and embarked on a quest to develop a new musical style that was at once modern, appealing to all social and economic strata (but especially to the lower classes), and distinctly Indonesian—or at least “Eastern”—in character. Singing in the Indonesian language (a Malay dialect) with his Soneta Group, he tapped the diverse cultural resources of Jakarta, focusing especially on the so-called Melayu music (also called orkes Melayu, literally “Malay orchestra”), a genre associated particularly with the urban areas of northern and western Sumatra. Melayu music was in itself a syncretic genre that drew heavily from the melodic style and instrumentation of Indian and Malaysian film music as well as Middle Eastern secular dance music. To this mix he injected an element of rock. The result was a vibrant ensemble of vocalists, electric guitars, synthesizers, and drums, often supplemented with flute or mandolin played in a style that underscored the music’s Indian and Middle Eastern connections. Most notably, the ensemble included an Indian tabla (a pair of single-headed drums) that continually sounded a distinct rhythm, expressed onomatopoetically as dang-dut (with emphasis on the second syllable). It is from this rhythm that the new genre, pioneered and propelled by Oma, drew its name.

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Most of Oma’s early dangdut music appealed to the lower socioeconomic classes and consisted of light, upbeat love songs, typically performed in collaboration with popular female singers—most notably, Elvy Sukaesih. After returning from the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) in 1975, however, Oma shifted direction. He not only began to cultivate a heavier, rocklike sound, but, most significantly, he determined to use his music to spread the word of Islam and to speak out against the ills of society. He also added Rh- to the beginning of his first name, becoming Rhoma. The two letters stood for Raden Haji, Raden being an aristocratic title and Haji indicating completion of the hajj. In themselves, then, the two letters embodied a social commentary; as Raden, Rhoma claimed a link to high-class society, and as Haji he demonstrated his devotion to his Muslim faith.

Rhoma’s subsequent recordings addressed issues of moral laxity, unemployment, human rights abuses, and other social problems. His song “Qur’an dan Koran” (c. 1982; “The Qurʾan and the Newspapers”), for instance, accused the public of being infatuated with technology to the point of forsaking the teachings of Islam; “Begadang II” (c. 1978; “Staying Up All Night II”) addressed the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Although many of Rhoma’s songs criticized the West, they also offered sharp commentary on Indonesia’s social inequities, thereby prompting the government to ban his music from television and radio for about a decade between the late 1970s and the late ’80s. Much of the upper class similarly viewed dangdut music as unrefined, vulgar, and generally corruptive of the country’s social mores. Nevertheless, with his engaging, danceable sound, his provocative messages, and his dynamic stage presence, Rhoma became and remained Indonesia’s most popular celebrity for most of the late 20th century. He released more than 100 albums and also starred in numerous chart-topping dangdut films, such as Perjuangan dan Do’a (1980; Struggle and Prayer), most of which were moralistic.

By the mid-1990s both the upper classes and the government had changed their stand somewhat on dangdut, having come to understand the music as an important expression of Indonesian development and culture. Rhoma continued to produce new dangdut albums, some of which supported the political causes, such as the call for reformasi—or “reform”—that ultimately triggered the resignation of President Suharto in 1998. Although Rhoma’s production slowed in the early 21st century, the dangdut music he had so vigorously promoted continued to thrive in urban pubs and at rural parties, not only in Indonesia but throughout the Malay-speaking regions of Southeast Asia.